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Friday, October 21, 2016

Today's #flashfiction The Software Pirate

“My eyes are
up here.”

Medusa* #quote

CJ's going to be coming over this week so that'll be nice. Hopefully
I won't have too many seizures. Anyway onto the flash fiction!

The Software Pirate

“Arrr,” said the black-bearded software pirate in anger as he
held morning coffee in tired disdain of the morning. His right hand
firmly hooked around his mouse while he clasped his mouse. He lazily
pegged one of his legs on his desk. He wore a black baseball cap with
a skull on it along with a black t-shirt with the same skull.

“Stupid computer, squawk, stupid computer!” The software
pirate's pet parrot mimicked him from the previous day. The parrot
then imitated the answering machine. “Davey the boss wants the
software. Get the software!”

“You just got to remind me huh little buddy,” Davey replied. He
put down his coffee and pulled out a cracker from his desk drawer and
threw it between the cage bars to the parrot. It took owning the
parrot for awhile to learn how to do that, and baseball with his Dad
when he was young, to learn how to throw. “Don't worry Jolly, my
little feathered friend, we'll get the software the boss wants and
get all the money we need for all the crackers you want.”

Davey laughed to himself. He knew that only talked to his pet parrot
most of the time. He probably needed more friends. Or even better a
girlfriend. Well, once the boss paid him the three million he won't
have any problem getting either. Invest and he'll be a rich man for
quite some time.

The operation was risky, and difficult. He pirated and stole music
and games for most of his life. Cracking the security of game
companies. Not exactly Fort Knox. But recently he decided to pirate
software inside a Fort Knox. Military software. He didn't feel afraid
though. On the screen it all looked the same. It's not like he saw
men with guns. Just firewalls and whatever else. As harmless as any
other company. Right?

A few hours of work later and he plundered the program from the
military server and onto his computer. When it finished downloading
he smiled and thought of all the fancy cars he would have. With the
three million the boss would be paying him and a bit of hacking of
the stock exchange he knew he could be one of the richest men alive.
Davey didn't put much thought into what the boss would be doing with
the military program.

The door to his apartment was then kicked down. He heard the crash
several rooms over. He heard many footsteps with a proclamation of
his full name, the phrase “we have a warrant” and his furniture
being overturned.

He quickly pushed a few keys on his keyboard. An ultimate backup
plan. It dumped the files on his computer into a hidden remote area
of the Internet and began to wipe his computer clean. That was a
great deal of data, as his computer was more like twenty computers
combined into one to make a homemade supercomputer. He had to steal
most of the parts from the computer company he worked for in his day
job as they were out of what he could possibly afford.

The footsteps belonged to what looked like a combination of S.W.A.T.
and Marines. Had they caught him poking around the military servers
beforehand? Was he in that much trouble? Was him actually pulling the
data the thing they needed to arrest him? These questions ran through
his head. Stealing the data finally became scary where instead of
just working on his computer and dealing with websites and hacking he
was staring down real people with real weapons who considered him a
real threat. With the guns they must have thought he might have been
a bigger operation. Though considering how much he was going to paid
for it, maybe he was part of something he couldn't even fathom.

It didn't matter how big he was as an operation though. They
arrested him. The computer managed to be wiped in time that they
couldn't find evidence of him having the stolen data, but they did
have enough evidence of him accessing the servers and several other
crimes. A trial later put the notorious pirate away for several
years. But he never revealed the location of where he buried his
hidden data on the Internet. Perhaps some hacker will find his
treasure someday.